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ISLAMABAD: A much delayed Rs3 billion strategic project to secure the Balochistan capital from terrorism and smuggling appears to have become a turf war between two Chinese contractors and their influential supporters.

Sources said the former chief minister Sanaullah Zehri had approved the award of the contract to the ‘lowest evaluated bidder’ — Huawei consortium — on the expert advice of the procurement regulatory authority.

The provincial bureaucracy sat on the approval for around two weeks and is reported to have persuaded new Chief Minister, Abdul Quddus Bizenjo, to overturn the decision and has issued a letter of intent (LoI) to the ‘bidder with lowest price’ — ZTE consortium.

Both the chief ministers took their respective decisions on the same summary. “The ongoing saga of the award of contract for the execution of Quetta Safe City Project is setting a new standard in terms of influence peddling and stretching of procurement rules,” according to an official who has been part of the selection process spread over 18 months.

New chief minister overturns contract approved by his predecessor

The project envisaged about 1,400 security cameras, three scanners on main city entrances, 300km fibre optic cable, 260 poles and integrated security control rooms with hardware and screens.

The two parties, vested interests, bureaucracy and political leadership have been fighting over the project since 2016, causing an inordinate delay and a series of security incidents in Quetta over the last year.

The terms of reference (ToR) for Quetta Safe City were issued in September 2016 to selected public sector entities and their international technical partners as required under the Balochistan Public Procure­ment Regulatory Authority (BPRA) Rules. The parties included ZTE with SCO, National Electronic Complex (Necop), National Tele­communication Company (NTC), Huawei with National Radio Transmission Company (NRTC) and HKH and Army Welfare Trust (AWT).

Necop and NTC decided not to participate. The remaining bids were submitted on Sept 30, 2016. The Balochistan government appointed Nespak as the principal consultant that utilised the specialised services of a UK-based consulting firm — Red Tag. After four months of evaluation, AWT’s bid was disqualified on technical grounds.

Based on technical qualification, the financial bids of Huawei and ZTE consortiums were opened and the scores were collated and finalised on the basis of ‘Quality and Cost-Based Selection Method” as required under terms of reference of the BPRA rules. This required quality as the prime consideration and cost as secondary consideration and the firm with the highest combined / evaluated weighted score has to be declared winner.

The TOR laid out the scoring and evaluation criteria in accordance with Rule 34 (evaluation criteria) of the BPRA Rules, accorded 80 per cent weightage to technical and 20pc to the financial bid. On the basis of combined scores of 86.48, Huawei-NRTC consortium scored the highest marks while the ZTE-SCO achieved the second position by scoring 76.80.

As the lobbying intensified, the results were not announced as ZTE group supported the lowest financial bid while Huawei group claimed combined best scores on the basis of the bidding criteria.

Instead of adhering to the procurement rules that prohibit further negotiations and seek declaration of the winner on the basis of the competitive bidding process, the Balochistan government directed the two consortiums to submit revised financial bids. Yet again, based on the revised bids, the Huawei consortium achieved the highest evaluated score.

Because of intense debate, the provincial government approached BPRA for certain clarifications. The BPRA clarified that since the basis of the bidding was clearly laid out to be quality, the party scoring the highest aggregate marks (technical and financial) was the winner. It also said the selection criteria couldn’t be changed after submission of the bids and during the evaluation process.

Accordingly, the winner is the party achieving the highest score in compliance with the laid out scoring criteria and not necessarily the party with the lowest bid price, the BPRA noted on quoting the evaluation criteria and other terms and conditions set forth in the bidding document.

Notwithstanding unambiguous clarification by the BPRA, the Balochistan chief secretary proposed two options to the former chief minister. One, the project should be awarded to Huawei-NRTC on the basis of overall high score of 84.01 but with higher bid price of Rs2.96bn. Second, the project be given to ZTE-SCO with a low price of Rs2.28bn, but a lower evaluated score.

In view of legal clarifications by the BPRA, the former chief minister approved the Huawei-NRTC for contract award on November 3 last year, although it was financially expensive but technically stronger.

The bureaucracy did not issue the LoI for two months to the approved bidder.

As soon as the chief minister was forced to step down due to the evolving political situation, the provincial bureaucracy found a window to overturn his LoI approval to ZTE-SCO on Jan 26.

On DawnNews

Comments (35) Closed

Asmat Jamal

Feb 05, 2018 07:47am

This game is on since 2009 when NESPAK was granted consultancy. Self interests weighed heavy than the need for security of general public. Raisaini Government wanted PTCL to do it, Later when the Government changed, the interests changed and it became a race for more commission is on.
This is right project to be investigated by NAB

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Otha

Feb 05, 2018 07:54am

My division COPS organized a meeting with residents of my street, collected funds in a weak, installed 32 CCTV's in next two weeks.

Dear pak, buy the product yourself, and install it yourself.

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Farhan

Feb 05, 2018 07:56am

Why only Chines bidders?

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farooq shaikh

Feb 05, 2018 08:35am

A classical case of political corruption and exhibition of vest interests. This is the time for sou moto from judiciary to protect national interest. A lot of opportunities have been wasted due to this inept behaviour of politicians with the collaboration of corrupt bureaucracy.

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Nasr

Feb 05, 2018 08:36am

Kickbacks Kiickbacks & Kickbacks that is what govt tenders stand for

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shubs

Feb 05, 2018 09:18am

Is there no Pakistani company capable of installing cameras and laying fibre optic cables? I'm amazed!

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Abdul Malik KHALFAN

Feb 05, 2018 09:32am

So what is new? Politician and bureaucrats have their hands in their pockets.

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khanm

Feb 05, 2018 09:48am

the biggest question is ...what is in it for me...You can’t remake yourself, whenever you wish. You can’t completely discard older versions of yourself like incremental software upgrades. It doesn’t work like that. You can’t learn from that. You need to be able to continually progress while maintaining a part of who you were.
I think there’s a beauty in remembering the clothes we used to wear. The books we used to read. The people we used to care for, and hurt. When you stop remembering, you stop moving.

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SAT

Feb 05, 2018 10:06am

Fit case to study influence peddling in Pakistan in award of contracts.

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Jay

Feb 05, 2018 10:16am

It is really tragic that a project of such national importance is handed over to foreigners. May be Chinese are not foreigners any more, they are the masters.

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Jawaid

Feb 05, 2018 10:53am

The process of transparency and accountability in award and implementation of mega projects in Baluchistan should have focused monitoring and reporting. Because it is mostly run by tribal chiefs who know well how to enrich themselves.

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Right

Feb 05, 2018 11:26am

Both Huawei and ZTE are useless companies. Their substandard work can be seen in Islamabad and Lahore. Government should also invite some European companies if they are still available for Pakistan.

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Jjacky

Feb 05, 2018 11:30am

@Farhan because its related to cpec.

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Wahab

Feb 05, 2018 11:32am

@Farhan Because the money is chinese. They would not have funded if contractors were pakistani or from some other country

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Khurshid

Feb 05, 2018 12:46pm

It's not about quality, quantity or any such cases what so ever may be. It's all about who will pay the highest commission, wins the race. Game on hay

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Khurram

Feb 05, 2018 12:50pm

How come state security has been delegated to Chinese companies, that too for installing cctv cameras? Buy these and install yourself. What's the big deal? Also I would recommend people to read on the track record of these two companies with respect to protection of user's data and security.

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Truth

Feb 05, 2018 01:03pm

How does business in Pakistan work ? How is it the only one bidding are Chinese does that not make ppl worried

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Vivek Wani

Feb 05, 2018 01:24pm

China looting Pak.

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Abbasshah

Feb 05, 2018 01:25pm

The historic cities of Huripur &Abbottabad In CEPC leftaside In it’s motorways constructions as people still have to travel long congested old routes to reach these destinations??? Not much economic on people s life can be envisaged also?? However HAZARA have come out of its sleepiness a good development.

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Prateik

Feb 05, 2018 01:46pm

Every bidding project should invite atleast three bidders.

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karam

Feb 05, 2018 02:02pm

@Farhan . Isnt it by default...

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Asif Kahsmiri

Feb 05, 2018 02:23pm

@Farhan Exactly

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Nasir A.

Feb 05, 2018 02:35pm

Save the money and do nothing. The cameras will hardkybprevent anything other than provide footage for media.

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aKZIs KSA

Feb 05, 2018 03:34pm

@Right They're not only available but always pushing hard to win, but they are way too expensive, secondly and most importantly they're no more trustworthy either...
the snooping software that was found in a box few years ago placed at a "strategic place", have already alarmed the strategists..

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Asif

Feb 05, 2018 05:11pm

Thanks to a great historical Friendship.

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fRedIndian

Feb 05, 2018 05:59pm

Where’s the money to pay then going to come from? Already the total debt including CPEC is currently around US$90 billions

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Asjad Khan Khattak

Feb 06, 2018 10:17am

Very interesting article though some facts are changed. Seems this is writing by someone in Huawei.

First of all why are we mentioning vendors here? The RFP was issues State Owned organisations only and they chose partners. So technically the fight is between NRTC and SCO.

Secondly if they are going for the technical first then why bothering for even calling in financials? Chinese solutions are not at par with the rest of the market leaders but they were intentionally kept away by asking for Chinese only in the rfp. Which again is a violation of the procurement rules.

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FQ

Feb 06, 2018 04:03pm

@Otha And evade taxes ?

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IAB

Feb 06, 2018 05:06pm

and they will deploy cameras with such low resolution which cannot even be used to identify any one.. also they usually lack central command and control capabilities that are vital for any useful surveillance system!

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Aimal

Feb 06, 2018 07:10pm

This could be a compromise on national security issues, as the Chinese will have free access to important security related data collected through their electronic surveillance equipment. Is this in the interest of the nation?

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M. Siddique

Feb 06, 2018 09:21pm

Since both the bidder seem to be almost at par, that means the final commission deal will be the deciding factor. NAB, please get ready to handle a new case.

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Hopeful

Feb 06, 2018 11:53pm

@Farhan Chinese surveillance is the best.

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Hopeful

Feb 06, 2018 11:54pm

Unfortunately the bidding depends on which Minister gets his share of the bribes. All government officials are corrupt. They claim that it is because they are so poor.

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Hopeful

Feb 06, 2018 11:55pm

A quick decision may have saved many lives but does the corrupt officials care?

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M Wasim K

Feb 07, 2018 03:47am

@Farhan Because Pakistani businesses are usually are corrupt and install low quality equipment and take money for high quality.